I’ve been asked by many to share my thoughts, and though I’ve been resisting, I thought I’d say a few things about the recent and ongoing conflict between Russia and Georgia… and the US (I guess we did get ourselves inappropriately mucked up in this).

First of all I’d like to take a moment to welcome Russia to the modern world as they have acted as a completely typical and predictable regional state power (other Slavophils will recognize just how bizarre it is to attach those adjectives to anything Russian). There really is nothing out of the ordinary here, and in fact, in a grander sense, Russia is acting much more appropriately than the last time the United States engaged in serious regional power-flexing (I speak, of course, of the 1980s and Latin America). Russia saw instability in its region and moved in militarily, probably excessively. I think I’ve seen a similar play before with different actors… I can’t be sure though, that one might have been a comedy, it was a little far-fetched (I hope the reader picks up the reference here, but if not that is my fault and I’m not looking to get into it any further).

Secondly, I’d like to point out the hilarious irony here. Russia has taken military action claiming to defend the right of self-determinism in regions neighboring Russia. I’ll just provide some empty space to allow that to settle a bit.

So, Putin, remember Chechnya? Just another way that Russia has become more modern and typical. Ideals shifting unabashedly with circumstantial interests! Yay go modern nation-state! In previous epochs Russia has been an anomaly in that, while lead by awful men engaging in horrendous acts, Russia has typically had a sort of ideological zealotry it has stuck to, quite firmly. Not the case here, and if the rest of the world had a mirror it cleaned more often than once a century, it would probably applaud Russia for assuming more common tactics.

Moving on. Another point I’d like to make is that this conflict has really made clear for me the awful state of macro journalism in the US and Europe. I have not read one single article by a major news source that was not painfully un-inhibited by standards I would call essential to journalism. Some have chosen to be pro-Georgia, some pro-Russia, some even pro-US (what the hell?), but no one has relayed the facts and only the facts. This has caused me to have very little to say about the specific events that took place to cause this conflict. I simply don’t know! And I’m starting to think nobody else does either.

But what is really noteworthy here is just how un-noteworthy this conflict is turning out to be. Russia seems to have become a fairly typical international player and a regional power. Georgia may or may not have acted inappropriately but before we start name calling on Russia we should probably think about the fact that the man who almost certainly orchestrated some seriously illegal and awful regional power-flexing in Latin America during the Reagan years went on to serve as President and to produce in his offspring one of the worst Presidents in our nation’s history. Food for thought anyways…

One of the best things I have learned in the past week is that there are actually an impressive number of Congressmen on Twitter. The other great thing is that a lot of them are personally twittering rather than having staffers do it for them. There is a nice nice wiki with the names of known governmental types on twitter. A lot of them seem to only update very infrequently (such as Mark Udall (D-CO)), or have staffers writing their tweets (such as Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner the majority and minority leader respectively). However their are a lot of congressmen that are writing their own tweets and replying to other twitterers. Dan Burton even has two accounts @DanBurton for his personal tweets and @RepDanBurton for official stuff from his press office. The grandaddy of all congressional twitterers is John Culberson from the Texas’ 7th District with almost 1300 updates. Another wild thing is that he follows 3200 people and is followed by 3000. He has also made a splash recently by Twittering and Qikking live updates and video from inside the House of Representatives during what has been called a Republican congressional revolt.

A couple interesting trends in congressional Twittering is that I expected Democrats to be more on top of new web technology but Republicans outnumber them on Twitter (at least from the list above) pretty significantly. From a quick look Republicans also seem to be the most prolific twitterers (discounting feeds that appear to be done by staffers). It also seems that Twitter has brought Democrats and Republicans together on some issues. Basically Culberson and a Democrat ally, Rep. Tim Ryan, want to overhaul rules regulating correspondence from representatives. The current rules are somewhat archaic and are based on the findings of the Franking Commission which was set up to regulate how postal fee allotments could be used by congressmen. The rules forbid posting to any website that contains politicking or advertising (i.e. pretty much every website) in their “official capacity” and posts must include a disclaimer identifying the poster as a representative. The 140 character cap on Twitter prevents that. The rules also apply to blogs, youtube, and other social networking sites.

It is extremely interesting to see how congress keeps up with technology in their personal lives. It is extremelty interesting to see folks like Rep. Culberson interacting quite directly with constituents (and other citizens whether they agree or not).

For example (excerpts put together from twitter feeds):

@johnculberson 1st back up your tax assertion 2nd actually? IMO market can drive it IF we do it right & we’re not.

@jpippert I strongly support alternatives-but without taxing anyone else to pay for it. Let free market & tax credits drive it-but drill 1st

@johnculberson & drill here drill now: listen to T Boone Pickens & his mtg with Obama re dev. alternative energy. http://tinyurl.com/6lvayh

How is that for direct democracy?

UPDATE: There has been a briefing by the Pentagon which has video of the missile launch, the “kill,” and a brief analysis. The launch occurred on time with no delays due to weather (only 2-3 foot seas). It looks like the shoot down was successful and the hydrazine tank was, in fact, destroyed along with the satellite. The collision occurred at 153 nautical miles above the Earth (~283km).
UPDATEII: Also, what do you know… it looks like there is already amateur photography of the debris field and the hydrazine trail, courtesty of Rob in Maui, Hawaii.

As many of you may know the US military is planning on shooting down a rogue spy satellite in a decaying orbit. It is designated USA-193. The satellite failed immediately after launch and was reported by amateur satellite watchers to have a decaying orbit. The official reason for shooting down the satellite rather than allowing it to deorbit on its own is that the ~5000 pound satellite contains about 1000 pounds of frozen hydrazine propellant that could potentially deorbit into parts of North America. It has been confirmed that the USS Lake Erie, a Ticonderoga class guided missile cruiser, will fire a modified SM-3 missile to intercept the satellite. This may occur sometime within a couple hours of this post, but it looks like weather might delay the shot. Despite assurances from the US, there has been wide speculation that the reason for shooting down the satellite is to test US anti-satellite (ASAT) capabilities, specifically as a reaction to the unannounced test by the Chinese which destroyed a weather satellite dubbed FY-1C in early 2007.
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Tonight I was surfing around the internet trying to find something interesting to read (one of my favorite activities) while the pseudo-sweet sounds of Amunblane and the Electrocustics (Lucas & Nate playing everything under the sun on what has become a 6-guitar collection in my house) wafted through the hallways and into my office. Amazingly, something I saw made me think — a lot. I initially dismissed the title “Publisher Tests Selling by the Chapter” in my RSS feed from the Wall Street Journal. After some introspection on the idea, I came back to the article, and was disappointed by my inability to read the full article as, of course you know, WSJ requires a subscription. So I didn’t read it. Instead I’ll go on a major rant about this and many other things tie into a general theory of how we as a society consume content through technology, and offer a historical perspective on the subject. I may be very wrong about all these things, though I think it brings up a number of interesting issues that are worthy of consideration. (more…)

The CNN/YouTube presidential debate, in which voters submitted online videos with questions for the Democratic candidates, was praised in some quarters as the most earthshaking change in communication technology for presidential politics since the Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960. So says the New York Times editorial page today. I am not really feeling the shaking beneath my feet but hey the questions came from… online… you know… the internets… the tubes? Looks like the Times seems to feel the same way. But the format was still basically the same one that’s been used for nearly 50 years: candidates standing on a stage, answering questions selected by the news media during a made-for-television broadcast. The rest of the op-ed asks various experts for their opinion on what a real “new media” debate would be. I was not really satisfied with some of the answers others I like a lot. So I thought I would let the minds of vdov readers turn it over for a while and see if we could come up with anything better. (more…)